On “blueprint ecclesiologies”

In his excellent work Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology, Nicholas J. Healy mounts a scathing critique against what he calls “blueprint ecclesiologies.” Blueprint ecclesiologies are, according to Healy, characterized by the effort to articulate an ideal version of the church–a blueprint–by which the concrete church is meant to conform or realize itself. Healy detects five key methodological elements that are often at work in much of modern ecclesiology. First, there is the attempt to encapsulate in a word or phrase the essential nature or function of the church. One immediately thinks of Avery Dulles’ important work Models of the Church, which distinguishes between five concepts or images of the church that govern different approaches to ecclesiology. Dulles distinguishes between the church as “sacrament,” as “herald,” as “institution,” as “mystical communion,” and as “servant.” In a later expanded edition of his book Dulles includes a chapter on the church as a “community of disciples.” Dulles provides examples of key representative figures of each approach. So, for instance, Karl Rahner is usually associated with the “sacrament” model, while Karl Barth is seen as the prototype for the view of the church as “herald.”

In many ways Dulles is simply organizing what others have already done. Indeed, much of modern ecclesiology begins with a single primary concept or image of the church and then develops a systematic theological account for the legitimacy or the superiority of a given model. For instance, Tillard and Zizioulas, in differing ways, employ the concept of communion as an organizing and governing principle to describe the nature and function of the church. The Second Vatican Council, of course, employed a variety of concepts and images to describe the church. For instance, the council members spoke of the church as the “body of Christ” or as “the people of God.”

Healy notes that theologians tend to use a specific model in two ways: “in an explanatory way, to synthesize what is already known about the church; and in an exploratory way or heuristic way, to lead to new insights about its nature and activity” (27). It is also common to describe the variety of differing views about the church as a precursor (or a foil!) to the developing of one’s own superior view, or what Healy calls a “supermodel.” Dulles’ book can be seen as an example of this or H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture might also come to mind.

In many instances, theologians will distinguish between the supposed twofold ontological structure of the church. The primary and most fundamental aspect of the church is “spiritual” or “invisible.” In this view, the church has some true nature or essence. The other ontological aspect of the church is its “visible” or empirical reality, that is, its everyday practices, institutions, etc. The two ontological poles of the church are often described as a relation between the “invisible” and the “visible,” or the “ideal” and the “real.” Thus, the central task of ecclesiology becomes a matter of articulating the essential nature of the church or what the church ideally is.

One of the major problems with this approach, according to Healy, is that it tends to ignore the concrete reality of the church’s present practice and institutions in favor of an idealized, perfected church. In particular, the reality of the sinfulness of the church is often kept at bay in the theological description of the church. The disjunction that arises between the “ideal” church and the “real” church can lead to the view, as Healy puts it, “that ‘underneath’ our visible flaws there lies the ideal heart of gold if only those carping critics had sufficient ‘faith to see it.’”

The dangers of reactionary ecclesiologies

Is it theologically problematic that the core convictions of many contemporary accounts of the church seem fundamentally reactionary in character? Does this reflect a loss of confidence in the gospel or at least some feelings of insecurity? It seems to me that Radical Orthodoxy is probably the most obvious “movement” in theology that seems almost exclusively oriented toward positing the church as an “alternative” to modernity, liberalism, individualism, capitalism, nihilism, the nation-state, fill in the blank. Now while I think there are certain helpful insights to be gained from John Milbank and RO, I am uncomfortable with the highly reactionary character of their work. I wonder if this tendency extends beyond RO.

In his insightful essay “Ecclesiology and Communion,” Nicholas Healy suggests that much of post-Vatican II “communion ecclesiology” tends to idealize the church and therefore lends itself to ideological distortion. He argues that, when coupled with a realized eschatology, communion ecclesiology conceives the church “primarily in terms of an attained or always-already grace-given perfection–communion–its need for continual reform and repentance can too easily be forgotten.” The question for Healy then is whether the concept of communion can do the critical work necessary in order to avoid a sort of valorization of “community.” Healy sees this approach problematically at work in John Zizioulas, Jean-Marie Tillard, Joseph Ratzinger, and also in the approaches of the so-called “new ecclesiology,” which consists of thinkers like Stanley Hauerwas, George Lindbeck, Reinhard Hütter, and others.

Now certainly this phenomenon is not a particularly modern or postmodern one. The church has always defined itself against internal and external forces. One thinks, for example, of the role of Augustine’s dispute with the Donatists in formulating his own constructive ecclesiology. But Healy thinks that there is an evident shift in recent times. Healy, for example, criticizes Zizioulas and Tillard for identifying church membership with salvation, thereby collapsing ecclesiology and soteriology, and defining the characteristics of ecclesial existence against what is lacking in the world outside the church. To Zizioulas and Tillard, “to become a member of the church,” in Healy’s words, “is to be saved from a world that is corrupt and sinful so as to live as God lives, in communion.”

Healy’s central fear is that the strong emphasis on the church’s practices coupled with the polemics against the world’s practices tends to neglect the place of divine action. Such accounts “foster a confusion of sanctification with salvation and ecclesiology with soteriology.” The point here is not to deny the centrality of the church, but to highlight that membership in the church does not bring about salvation–it is rather Christ who saves. Healy also notes that the independence of the Holy Spirit is downplayed. The Spirit must always “move us if we are to perform any right action, even when we have the virtues for it.” And, indeed, the Spirit is free to act, even within the modern liberal world. Further, Healy observes the lack of an account of the Word as judgment on the church as well as the world. Healy’s central concern is that an idealized view of the church and its practices tends to neglect the real independence and freedom of the Son and the Spirit.

Healy suggests that what binds the communion ecclesiologies and the so-called “new ecclesiology” together is, in part, their reactionary character, namely, their common opposition to modernity. Just as the Roman Catholic church in the face of modern atheism tended to abandon the narrative of the gospel for apologetic philosophical and scientific proofs to ground belief in God, perhaps contemporary ecclesiology makes a parallel move when it shifts attention away from Christ’s saving acts to the church and its saving acts. As Healy puts it, “Perhaps the outrageousness of the gospel claims may seem less outrageous when they are placed within a critical account of the woes of modernity and how we may be saved from them.” In this way, ecclesiology takes on a distinctly apologetic function, “that of ameliorating the starkness of the gospel claims by situating them within a communal solution to contemporary social problems that appeals to well-meaning moderns and postmoderns.”